christian ethics
Ethical hacks for managing our adolescent technologies
Kate Ott looks at the moral implications of digital language.
Two ways of being Christian and pro-choice
Is abortion only the lesser of evils, or can it be a moral good?
by Amy Frykholm
Katie Geneva Cannon, groundbreaking womanist ethicist and theologian, dies at age 68
Teaching was her ministry.
Too good for this world
If your mother is drowning in one location and two strangers in another, should you save your mother or the two strangers?
Public policy and love of neighbor in a time of transition
We live in an era of transition between more stable ages. We face material choices now that will shape and serve our communities for long generations to come. Society is emerging in fits and starts from centuries of essentialism that defined people by race, gender, religion, and class into narrow identities with determined roles.
Claims on Bonhoeffer: The misuse of a theologian
People appeal to Bonhoeffer to justify a range of moral choices. They tend to ignore his emphasis on context and the need for constant discernment.
Tortured ends and means
Reinhold Niebuhr once broke with the editor of this magazine to argue that moral responsibility requires resisting evil with force. It’s a compelling argument, but it doesn’t justify torture.
Dignity and choice
How do we move from Jesus' core ethical mandate to the complex issues we face in the modern world?
Ethics in our time: A conversation on Christian social witness
In the first issue of the magazine named the Christian Century, in January 1900, the editors said that their special interest was in “the application of Christian principles to character and social problems.” They also spoke of their hope to make the kingdom of God “a divine reality in human society.” This, of course, was what we know today as the “social gospel”—the attempt to move beyond individual piety to address broad social problems. What relevance does that social gospel vision have today?